An assessment of Creative and Innovative Management In Tesco PLC. By Seyed Jafar Payandeh LCUCK, College of London Lecturer: Professor Ashish Gupta Final assignment 18/ 02/ 2013 Contents Subject Page 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………...4 2. Aims of topic………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…..…………5 3. Creative and Innovative Management process in Tesco…………………………………………………………………………………………….…….……………6 4. Leadership to consistently stay creative and innovative in Tesco………………………………………………………………………….……………………...7 5. Vision and Mission in Tesco: Assessment of their creativity and innovation………………………………………………………….…………….………..8 6. Potential creative and innovative ideas in Tesco………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………….………….9 7. Benefits and risks of Creative and innovative ideas…………………………………………………………………………………………….………………………..10 8. Change models supporting implementation creative and innovative ideas………………………………………………………….……………..………..11 9. Persuading the stakeholders of Tesco in terms of benefits of a creative and innovative management idea with the production of an appropriate rationale……………………………………………..………………………………………………………………..………………….12 10. Evaluation of the communication of a creative and innovative management idea to stakeholders of Tesco….………….………………....13 11. Key goals for implementation of a creative and innovative management idea using feedback from stakeholders………………………..15 12. Assessment of the barriers to the implementation of a creative and innovative management idea in Tesco………….………..…………..16 13. Explanation of a plan of a strategy to overcome identified barriers to the implementation of a creative and innovative management idea in Tesco………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..17 2 14. Evaluation of the communication of a strategy plan for overcoming barriers to relevant stakeholders in Tesco………………………….19 15. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….…………….20 16. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..…………..21 17. Self-evaluation………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……………………………23 3 Introduction This report as an interim assignment, has written to assess the creative and innovative management in Tesco Plc. To understand the level of creativity and innovation in this well-known organization, it is necessary to look into the history of it, then to process and potency of innovative and creative management in Tesco. History of Innovation and Creativity in Tesco Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen. He began selling surplus groceries from a stall in the East End of London in 1919. He left the Royal Flying Corp at the end of the Great War and used his [trivial] demob money, [£30], to buy the first day's stock. At the end of the first day Jack Cohen made a profit of £1 on sales of £4 (Tesco, 2012). In 1924, the first own-brand product sold by Jack was Tesco Tea - before the company was called Tesco. The name comes from the initials of TE Stockwell, who was a partner in the firm of tea suppliers, and CO from Jack's surname. Jack Cohen opened the first Tesco store in Burnt Oak, Edgware, and north London in 1929. The store sold dry goods and the first ever branded product, which, unsurprisingly, was Tesco Tea! In 1934 Jack Cohen bought a plot of land at Angel Road, Edmonton, north London to build a new headquarters and warehouse (Tesco, 2012). It was the first modern food warehouse in the country and introduced new ideas for stock control. The 1930s saw Jack Cohen growing the business by buying stores in the expanding London suburbs. Jack Cohen decided to venture into self-service following a research visit to North America. The first of these new stores opened in St Albans, Hertfordshire in 1948 with a mixed react ion from customers at first. In 1955 Tesco bought 19 Burnards stores. Between 1955 and 1960 over 500 new stores were purchased. The first supermarket was opened in Maldon, Essex. In 1958 the store included a counter service selling cheese, butter and meats weighed by sales assistants. Tesco started selling household goods and clothing in our stores across the UK in 1960 (Tesco, 2012). Green shield stamps were introduced in 1963. Stamps collected at the checkout could be exchanged for a range of goods from a catalogue. The term 'superstore' was first used in 1968 when Tesco opened its store in Crawley, West Sussex. In 1973 Tesco opened a new head office in Cheshunt, called New Tesco House. In 1977 the Green Shield Stamps were phased out and replaced by a major price-cutting initiative called 'Checkout at Tesco'. This advert helped launch this campaign. In 1982 for the first time, we introduced computerised checkouts to our stores. 4 Tesco launched its own label healthy eating range of products in 1985, the first major retailer in the UK to do so. In 1992 the first Tesco Metro store opened in Covent Garden and offered products tailored to the local market with a strong emphasis on lunchtime snacks. Since 1992 the scheme of “Computers for schools”, has raised £185 million worth of equipment for schools around the UK. The Every Little Helps strap line as a new campaign attracted 1.3 million new customers between 1993 –1995 and Tesco Value was launched to offer the customers a wider choice of products at a great price (Tesco, 2012). In 1994 Tesco Express opened in London and been used as a traditional village shop. The Tesco Clubcard was launched in 1995 and attracted nearly 5 million customers in the first year. Tesco opened its first Extra format store in Pitsea, Essex in 1997. Tesco Personal Finance as new saving accounts exceeded all expectations and over 300,000 applications were received in this year. Tesco.com was launched in 2000 and has grown to serve over 500,000 customers each week. Tesco Direct, the catalogue business, was launched in 2006. The catalogue provides an extensive range of electrical appliances, home furnishings, toys and much more. In 2009 Tesco set out our plans to build a full service retail bank after buying out the RBS 50% stake in Tesco Personal Finance. Following the acquisition, Tesco Personal Finance became known as Tesco Bank. A new Club card app was launched in the UK in 2010, which gave customers a new way to swipe their cards in store. The new Tesco Asia Academy opened in Incheon, South Korea. Each year 24,000 staff across Asia will be trained at the Academy. In this year the Friends Loyalty Card was launched at Fresh & Easy in the US. The scheme gives cash rewards and bonus point coupons (Tesco, 2012). Aims of the topic This report aims at understanding the importance of innovative and creative management in Tesco and the processes wherein Tesco has executed innovation and creativity to add more profit to its earning. In fact, answering to the question of “How is Tesco performing the creative and innovative management ideas within the organization?” is the main point of this report. The intrinsic purpose of this report is to gain an experience of looking into a real business’s potentials for innovative and creative ideas and consequently, developing those ideas by the means of assessing the barriers facing through the implementation process in the organization, t hen to identify some strategies to do away with the barriers. 5 Creative and Innovative Management process in Tesco The emergence of the knowledge economy, intense global competition and considerable technological advance has seen innovation become increasingly central to competitiveness. Innovation is the mechanism by which organisations produce the new products, processes and systems required for adapting to changing markets, technologies and modes of competition (Lawson & Samson, 2001). Luecke and Katz (2003) suggested a handy model for Innovation process which the ‘ introduction of a new thing or method’ and the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services’ through the lens of the business functions and processes needed to turn an idea into a commercial product. This model highlights two stages in the process of innovation: invention and exploitation. Idea Generation, Idea Evaluation and Opportunity Recognition embody processes and concepts associated with invention (or what may be called ‘ creativity’ ), while Development and Commercialisation are concerned with the exploitation of ideas. Together, these stages give us innovation. Figure 1 has shown the system of this model. Figure 1: Innovation process With regard to this model, Jack Cohen, although he started Luecke and Katz (2003) his business from a stall but after working hard the idea of merging with other businesses or companies arose in his mind. This idea led him to a special opportunity to become a partner of TE Stockwell in a tea supplier firm then to launch his business labelling by Tesco. He was aware enough of the market to expand his business by purchase of variety of lands and stores all over the UK. He was also a venturer in implementing his ideas in the face of emerging of new opportunities e.g. modernised food warehouse, new ads and services, technologies, marketing, data collection, safety and security, H/ R management etc. And these elements made his business the strongest retailer within the UK and the third entire the world. He knew any change would cost him so he chose those changes that would give him the best revenue. 6 Leadership to consistently stay creative and innovative in Tesco According to Professor Teresa M, Amabile’s (1996) note, Creativity is something done by creative people and is the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain. She stated that Innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organisation. In this point of view creativity by individuals and groups is a starting point for innovation. The particular form of innovation which is the successful implementation of creative ideas to produce new business, or a new initiative within an existing business is called entrepreneurship (Amabile, 1996). Thus, in order to lead the individuals’ creativity towards innovation or entrepreneurship it is necessary to link the components of creativity to components of innovation. Amabile (1996) suggested the three component model of creativity which illustrated that Expertise, Creativity skills and Task motivation are the main factors of creativity in an organization. Then she indicated the three elements of innovation which are Resources, Management practices and Organizational motivation. The leadership and organizational motivation is made up of the basic orientation of the organization toward innovation as well as supports for creativity and innovation throughout the organization. She added that the orientation toward innovation must come, primarily, from the highest levels of management, but lower levels can also be important in communicating and interpreting the vision. Amabile indicated some implications that foster the innovative and creative management namely allowing a considerable autonomy in the conduct of one’s work, appropriately matching individuals to work assignment by creating a positive challenge in the work, and project supervision. Looking into Tesco’s leadership, as mentioned in their profile, “the company pays considerable focus on harnessing the creativity of its workforce and encourages staff to come forward with ideas. The company’s prowess in process management applies just as much to its idea management as it does to logistics and store layout” (TESCO PLC, 2007). It seems that Tesco is leading its human resources in terms of Democratic style of leadership although the type of its management is obviously centralised. As Tesco uses encouragement of its staff to idea generation carrying it through innovation, it means, logically, it uses the transformational approach of leadership. There are also some assigned project supervisors who always look around within the stores and control the process of serving the customers and the condition of the staff. There is also a positive challenge between the work forces competing to gain the announced awards or promotion in case of being creative and effective. 7 Vision and Mission in Tesco: Assessment of their creativity and innovation Tesco’s vision for the future is to be the most highly valued business in the world. Valued not only by its customers, but also by the communities it serve, its loyal and committed staff and its shareholders. It is and it will remain a growth company. It will be a modern and innovative company and it will win locally by applying its skills globally (Tesco PLC, 2012). Thus, Tesco in order to remain leading retailer worldwide should be incrementally innovative and flexibly changing company in terms of adaptation to new ideas, new tech, new markets and coming opportunities. Its mission statement is that Tesco is the UK's largest retailer and one of the world's leading international retailers. Tesco has around 5,000 stores worldwide, employing over 500,000 people in the 14 countries in which it operates. Its core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty. Its success depends on people: the people who shop with us and the people who work with us. Looking into Tesco’s Values and permission they declare that “ We work in an environment that is based on trust and respect and we know that motivated staff will give our customers great service. By truly living our values, we create a great place to work and one where we deliver great customer satisfaction. In addition to 'Every Little Helps', we also have our own set of Customer Promises that determine how we treat our customers” (Tesco PLC, 2012). The Group Chief Executive of Tesco, Philip Clarke, stated that “Innovation doesn’t have to flow from a boardroom where we sit in meditative contemplation. Innovation can come from anyone in the business. My job is to make sure great ideas get a good hearing, that they are teased out and tuned up. Business leaders set the vision - the stretching ambition - and nurture a culture where everyone in the business is excited by innovation” (Clarke, 2012). In this regard, it is clear that vision and mission of Tesco drive the innovation and creativity not only top down but also considerably bottom up. 8 Potential creative and innovative ideas in Tesco Tesco’s trading domain spread out from UK (the core) to Europe, Asia and United States. In order to discover the innovative potencies for Tesco yet there is a graphical comparative analysis between the four arenas of Tesco’s international trading profit: UK trading profit Europe trading profit Asia trading profit US trading loss According to the financial review by Laurie Mcllwee, the Chief Financial Officer, The international businesses performed strongly, delivering an 18% increase in profits, which helped to compensate for the reduction in trading profit in the UK (Mcllwee, 2012). On this basis the potential innovative ideas could be the following choices: In the United States, Tesco reduced losses, moving towards breakeven, before accelerating investment; in Japan, it announced its decision to exit the market after eight years; in China, it stepped back from the freehold shopping centre programme and have decided to hold back on the pace of new leasehold hypermarket development for the time being; at the Bank, it slowed down the migration to its own platforms to ensure it was as smooth as possible; and in the UK, it took a significant step to correct its pricing position with The Big Price Drop and, in January, acted decisively to address the underperformance in its home market. These actions will make Tesco better for its customers and are supported by a financial strategy that will also make Tesco better for shareholders. Besides, Tesco’s trading in Asia has been successfully lucrative as it has surpassed the trading benefits from Europe and US. 9 Benefits and risks of Creative and innovative ideas Benefits: Since 2000 Tesco has become the world’s largest online grocery retailer. Tesco Direct website now offers more than 75,000 products. Tesco Bank, since launching in 1997, has grown to 6.5 million customer accounts across a range of products and services. In 2011/ 12 the bank’s revenue was £1bn and the profit was £168m. Tesco’s group sales have increased in 2011/ 12 to £72.0 b from £67.6 b in 2010/ 11. The number of stores owned by Tesco has increased from 5,380 in 2010/ 11 to 6,234 in 2011/ 12. The quantit y of employees also has up surged from 492,714 to 520,000 people (Tesco PLC, 2012). Risks: Tesco invested £30 million in its Asia training academy (Tesco PLC, 2012). As the Tesco’s US trading has lost £153 m, inevitably it needs a significant investment; Continual changing political climates worldwide and also technological arrivals; Failure to compete on areas including price, product range, quality and service in increasingly competitive UK and overseas retail markets could impact its market share and adversely affect the Group’s financial results; Failure to protect the Group’s reputation and brand could lead to a loss of trust and confidence, a decline in customer base and affect Tesco’s ability to recruit and retain experts and good people; Continuing acquisition and development of property sites carries inherent risk for Tesco; Failure to attract, retain, develop and motivate the best people with the right capabilities at all levels could limit Tesco’s ability to succeed and As the business grows in size and geographical scope, the potential for fraud and dishonest activity by Tesco’s suppliers, customers and employees increases (Tesco plc, 2011). 10 Change models supporting implementation of creative and innovative ideas Using IDEAL model of change, Tesco will be under investigation of requiring an urgent change. IDEAL is an acronym for Initiating, diagnosing, establishing, acting and learning. For Tesco competing with two more powerful retailers namely Walmart and Carrefour almost within the common market place, seems to be nerve wrecking and stressful. Thus, it could be a sensible initiating stimulus for Tesco to change. It could be diagnosed that reinforcement of the UK core and the Asia trading is vital to Tesco and also is a potential improvement opportunity for it. In the establishing phase, Tesco should provide a special team for change so that it could generate the idea to respond to the question of “how could Tesco achieve its goal?” A wise plan for this aim, could be: 1. Training the staff in terms of customer service or creativity at work; 2. Market development; 3. Merging to local leading businesses in host countries. In acting phase first of all, Tesco’s H/ R department of each brunch has to manage appropriate training courses to motivate and nourish its staff by giving them knowledge and convenience. Secondly, by entering new markets like Dubai, Oman, South America, Japan and Central Asia. Thirdly by probing the most important and dominant retailers in these countries and then by merging under the name of those companies or by buying majority of their shares. Learning from this problem, Tesco should make a long term strategy to overcome Walmart which is the first wealthy international retailer worldwide. It should collect several ideas and then study them to gain an innovative advantage for entire business. 11 Persuading the stakeholders of Tesco in terms of benefits of a creative and innovative management idea with the production of an appropriate rationale The Wright brothers, Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who were credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903 (BBC, 1999). In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their flying machine into the first practical fixed-wing aircraft. Although not the first to build and fly experimental aircraft, the Wright brothers were the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible. The brothers' fundamental breakthrough was their invention of three-axis control, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium (Padfield & Lawrence, 2003). The Wright brothers' status as inventors of the airplane secured them to be subjected to counter-claims by various parties. Thus it was a valuable moment for them to set their own company to innovatively develop their invention. Finally, The Wright Company was incorporated on November 22, 1909. The brothers sold their patents to the company for $100,000 and also received one-third of the shares in a million dollar stock issue and a 10 percent royalty on every airplane sold (Every first, 2012). In fact, the motivation for innovation rose from a moment when In 1878 their father, who travelled often as a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, brought home a toy "helicopter" for his two younger sons. The device was based on an invention of French aeronautical pioneer Alphonse Pénaud. Made of paper, bamboo and cork with a rubber band to twirl its rotor, it was about a foot long. Wilbur and Orville played with it until it broke, and then built their own. Thus, in later years, they pointed to their experience with the toy as the initial spark of their interest in flying (Wright & Wright, 1922). 12 Evaluation of the communication of a creative and innovative management idea to stakeholders of Tesco The basic components of collaborative idea management is support for users to submit new ideas, comment and develop already existing ones as well as support for managers to capture, track and further develop promising ideas. Finally Tesco needs support to administrate, measure and follow-up. The following scheme that is designed by InnovationManagement.se (2013) can help Tesco to communicate its innovative and creative ideas to its stakeholders: 1. To invite everyone to engage the entire organization. Several studies show that employees are t he number one source of innovative ideas. 2. To use the principle of self-organization to handle complexity and to let innovation needs be defined bottom-up using the IT tool to match idea supply and demand. 3. To embrace collaboration to leverage expertise and a diversity of perspectives. Openness will enable users from different parts of the organization to improve and comment on ideas. 4. To secure feedback and recognition for a sustainable initiative making sure idea owners can see everything what is happening to their ideas. Reward good ideas. 5. To integrate idea management into its overall collaboration effort. Benefits are a connected workflow, unified user interface and simplified support. This scheme is made up of the basic orientation of Tesco toward innovation, as well as supports for creativity and innovation through the organization. The orientation toward innovation must come, primarily, from the highest levels of management in Tesco, but lover levels can also be important in communicating and interpreting that vision. On the basis of existing information, as Ambile (1996) suggested, it appears that the most important elements of the communicating an creative and innovative idea in an organization are: a value placed on creativity and innovation in general, an orientation toward risk (versus an orientation toward maintaining the status quo), a sense of pride in the 13 organization’s members and enthusiasm about what they are capable of doing, and an offensive strategy of taking the lead toward the future (versus a defensive strategy of simply wanting to protect the organization’s past position). In terms of the “value” , Tesco’s vision for the future is to be the most highly valued business in the world. Valued not only by its customers, but also by the communities it serves, its loyal and committed staff and its shareholders. Tesco is and it will remain a growth company. It will be a modern and innovative company and it will win locally by applying its skills globally (Tesco PLC, 2012). The primary organization-wide supports for innovation appear to be mechanisms for developing new ideas; open, active communication of information and ideas; reward and recognition for creative work; and fair evaluation of work, including work that might be perceived as a “failure” (Amabile, 1996). As Paul Wilkinson, the innovative ambassador of Tesco, recently said, “we spend a lot of time applying new technology in-store so that we can improve the shopping experience for customers or make lives easier for colleagues around the business. A recent example was the introduction of mobile apps in-store, which enables our colleagues to use their phone cameras to scan products and find out further information, such as stock levels, which means they can be even more helpful to customers” (Tesco, 2013). Wilkinson also added that “good communication and teamwork are essential if we want to devise creative solutions. It’s important to gather ideas from people around the business, share our research with them and, most importantly, listen to our customers. My proudest moment at Tesco so far came at one of our regular events, when my team won the Tesco Hackathon. The new app we created, Tesco Discover , was then built and made available for customers to download. I think there’s been a shift in the way people think about innovation. At Tesco, we’re really open to new ideas and more creative than ever, but that’s been driven by changing customer habits and the fact that people are much more comfortable with technology – it’s just a natural part of everyone’s daily lives. In my team, I find that exciting because it gives us much more scope” (Tesco, 2013). Generally speaking, it seems that Tesco is well supporting the innovation ideas by providing variety of fashionable easy-to-access technologies through making an open and active communication of information among its internal, connected and external stakeholders. 14 Key goals for implementation of a creative and innovative management idea using feedback from stakeholders Regarding to most of its stakeholders’ expectation, Tesco should manage the innovation process for the Personalisation Programme, from information collection, collating all internal or external insight to information processing, selecting what’s relevant analysis and narrative and providing value added insight across the Personalisation programme. That will motivate ideas generation for the Tesco’s occasional innovation event through following key goals: • To stay close to the customer through market scanning, networking and by building relationships with key internal and external thought leaders • To support its managers scan developments and future trends in personalisation within the market • To work with the other Personalisation work streams to ensure they are aware and fully consider the latest trends and activities in personalisation within the market • To coordinate the collection of external and internal insight, engaging with stakeholders such as the dotcom Innovation team, Tesco and dunnhumby insight, research and R&D teams to collate all relevant external and internal insight required for the innovation process • To use stakeholders’ analytical skills and forward thinking to identify and select potential innovations in all areas of personalisation to bring into the overall programme roadmap • To support its managers to coordinate the Quarterly Innovation Events to ensure they deliver a new priority products list and a refreshed Products roadmap that will inform the future direction and focus of the Personalisation Programme. • To share learning across the Tesco Group to ensure rapid learning, up skilling and understanding • To understand the fast changing external environment in this area through external networking 15 Assessment of the barriers to the implementation of a creative and innovative management idea in Tesco Common Barriers Immovable Forces Judgment Playing by the Rules Hard Work No process Misunderstanding Causes Resistance to new ideas and processes happens because it’s human nature to become uncomfortable when confronting potential change agents. Management and leadership tend to resist because creativity often means embracing uncertainty and may pose possible difficulties in measuring returns on investment. Fear of a new idea is often manifested as criticism and sometimes harsh judgment. People mock and ridicule what they don’t understand. Policies and procedures, inflexible and rigid organizational structures, traditions, and a culture of playing by the rules, are keeping employees from participating, stifling any innovative or creative processes. Bringing ideas from development to implementation often takes a lot of effort or time to produce results. Most organizations and employees don’t want to devote the necessary time or effort to complete a creative project. Employees have ideas and want to share them but all they see is a dusty suggestion box. No other channels to input ideas are known by members to exist. Within an organization, creativity can be misunderstood by employees who are not creative in their work processes. Sometimes management will have little knowledge of the type of work it takes to produce creative projects 16 Explanation of a plan of a strategy to overcome identified barriers to the implementation of a creative and innovative management idea in Tesco Defined Barriers Immovable Forces Judgment Playing by the Rules Examples and Strategies Example: Old habits, beliefs, and expectations cloud openness to new ideas and override creative and innovative initiatives. Strategy: Tesco should share stories about creativity and innovation in a workplace setting through all available channels to put creativity into context and to disperse predetermined notions about creativity and innovation. It also can build an Idea Library to provide resources that make creativity more familiar identifying and communicating the benefits of adopting new ideas, for both the organization as well as for the employees, to help gain acceptance. Example: Employees who have ideas are reluctant to share because they worry that no one will like the idea. They are afraid of ridicule or the implications of possible failure. Strategy: Tesco should adopt a no-mockery ideology within the organization; Invite and inspire all employees, from all levels and departments, to become involved with innovative enterprises; Communicate failure and slipups as a necessary stepping stone to new approaches, products, and services. Example: A despotic environment has a tendency to force employees to conform to accepted patterns, rules, and inherent limitations of the status quo. This hampers creative thinking and new ideas. Strategy: Although some rules are necessary, many can subdue innovation and ideas. Tesco should consider if some of the rules can be changed, hassle-free, updated, or eliminated to make 17 allowances for the idea process to flourish. Hard Work No process Misunderstanding Example: Pessimism takes hold even before beginning a project or a project is eliminated before it even gets up and running. Lack of faith in the possible payoffs of a creative process can easily stymie or eliminate what might have been the next big idea. Strategy: Going afar the known, routine answers and allowing some time to discover more than one answer takes effort. Tesco should inspire employees by making it a competition or breaking larger initiatives into smaller, more controllable pieces. Example: Past organizational experience shows employees that ideas put in the suggestion box disappear into a black hole so employees don’t bother to submit anything. They may feel there is no reason to get involved. Strategy: Tesco can make it easy for its employees to input their ideas through a variety of different channels and technologies to encourage feedbacks; use leadership acknowledge and celebrate the value of ideas even if they can’t be operated; if an idea works, develop it. Example: An erroneous impression of what is creative can result in workplace conflicts that hamper productivity and creativity, or even create an unpleasant or unrealistic work environment for some employees. Strategy: Tesco should supply opportunities for all employees to use their creative side; provide a milieu for ideas and innovation within the organization with creative examples; offer training opportunities for employees to become more contented with their creative side. 18 Evaluation of the communication of a strategy plan for overcoming barriers to relevant stakeholders in Tesco The Tesco annual business plan is based on a ‘Steering Wheel’ of business drivers (segments), including ‘customer’, ‘finance’, ‘people’ and ‘operations. In addition, a fifth broad strategic area for future growth relating to ‘community and environment’ was introduced in 2006 following the launch of the first Tesco Annual Community Plan. This change to the business model, with the inclusion of the environment as an important business driver, was a significant step in building Tesco’s commitment to community, corporate responsibility and sustainability. It is an increasingly important area of business performance and has helped place these issues clearly at the heart of the business and at the forefront of people’s minds. The change has also resulted in increased resources, energy, focus and vigour being directed towards being ‘a good neighbour’ and ‘responsible, fair and honest’ in the way that business is done, especially in relation to the environmental impact of Tesco’s activities. Changing customer demands, combined with increased strategic prioritisation of environ-mental and sustainability issues, increased resources, partnerships and investment have driven a whole range of innovations at Tesco. (Please refer to appendix 1). Tesco has organised customer question times at stores to create an informal way of talking to customers and understanding their views. Last year Tesco held 115 customer question times where it met nearly 9,000 customers. Thus, talking to customers and finding out what they expect from Tesco is vital to the continued growth of the business (Tesco PLC, 2013). The retailer set up an open innovation jam, calling it the TJAM and invited interested customers to a day’s worth of brainstorming. Around 70 turned up and they were divided into groups headed up by a Tesco.com staff member. The jam style of open innovation can deliver a successful outcome when the right partners and participants are selected so that they can work toget her creatively and dynamically. Participants can include consumers, a company’s own staff members and suppliers. A consequence of this variety of backgrounds is that a jam will benefit from the diversity of viewpoints of those taking part. In addition, an important member of the jam is the facilitator who is fundamental to creating a truly collaborative environment that is status free (Idea Connection, 2013). Tesco shares its stories of any development in its website, under a subject called “Our stories” to keep its stakeholders aware of every change. 19 Conclusion Since the first time when Jack Cohen built up a stall and earned £1 out of £4 in its first day, to establishment of Tesco plc. by merging to a tea firm, then to development of the product to modern food industries, and to creating green labels for check out, to customers’ saving money tags, then to computerising the checkout systems, to utilising new technologies, social networks and several apps, Tesco has been leading the ideas toward creativity and innovation. Tesco innovatively raised its trivial asset of £30 to a bulky amount of £72.0 billion at the moment. Change has been the most consistent element of Tesco’s business and consistency on innovation and proper decision making has been the most rational reason for its success and being the third worldwide. By the use of updated information and technology, Tesco has been incrementally adding credit to its capital and even its reputation. Amabile (1996) stated that Creativity as a production of useful idea if be implemented properly produces the Innovation. She said if the three components of creativity i.e. Expertise, Creativity skills and Task motivation foster by work environment then along with the three factors of innovation i.e. Resources, Management practices and Organizational motivation, can lead to entrepreneurship. She suggested that by giving the workforces a substantial freedom, positive challenge and project supervision, the organisation would be innovatively successful. Tesco also by the use of Democratic style and transformational approach of leadership has given the wide opportunity to its staff to be creative and innovative while to make sure about the business safety and processes, supervisors are assigned within the stores and also awards and promotion is provided for winners of interpersonal activity competition. Eventually, with regard to the urgent need of change for Tesco in the face of the stronger retailer, IDEAL model of change that stands for initiating, Diagnosing, establishing, acting and Learning, it could be inferred that Tesco should respond to the changing market, by training its staff, entering new markets and merging to the local entrepreneur retailers. Looking at Wright brothers’ story of creative and innovative idea can make Tesco’s stakeholders to be convinced of the benefits of an innovative idea. 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Available from: <http:/ / ar2011.tescoplc.com/ > [Accessed 13 june 2012]. 21 Tesco PLC (2012) About Us: at a glance. [Online]. Available from: <http:/ / www.tescoplc.com/ files/ pdf/ factsheets/ at_a_glance.pdf> [Accessed 18 November 2012]. Tesco PLC (2012) Corporate responsibilty review. [Online]. Available from: <http:/ / www.tescoplc.com/ files/ pdf/reports/ tesco_cr_review_2012.pdf> [Accessed 18 November 2012]. Tesco PLC (2012) Our Values & Promises. [Online]. Available from: <http:/ / www.tescocustomerservice-careers.com/ page.cfm/ content/ our-values-and-promises/ > [Accessed 18 November 2012]. Tesco (2012) About us: Our history. [Online]. Available from: <http:/ / www.tescoplc.com/ index.asp?pageid=11> [Accessed 15 November 2012]. Wright, O. & Wright, W. (1922) The Early History of the Airplane. 1 ed. Daton: Dayton-Wright airplane Company. Tesco PLC (2013) Blog: innovation at Tesco. [Online]. Available from: https:/ / www.tescoplc.com/ talkingshop/ index.asp?blogid=92[Accessed 7 February 2013]. 22 Self-evaluation This course was an aspirational experience to me as it equipped me with an intuition towards understanding of how to create, plan and implement an innovative project in the business arena. I missed some of the classes due to several problems, which I wish I did not. I really enjoyed every seconds of the course because of the tutor’s fashionable teaching tactics and his dominance on the subjects. I did not benefit from the time I was free to discuss the topic with the tutor or I could not put the matters under the scrutiny during the course. Overall, for the assignment, I poured every potency I had into it and I analysed the Tesco’s need of innovative ideas precisely. Nevertheless, I found out that I need to be academically trained more to have profound point of view in this field. Due to some hardships, I didn’t have enough time to work on the second part of the assignment appropriately. I must thank god helping me to complete this course and also professor Gupta for his guidance and support. 23